Monday, March 13, 2017

One of the lesser realised musical gifts of the last decade
has been the extraordinary revival of post-punk and death rock in Europe, the
USA and to a lesser extent, the Eastern States of Australia. From Savages to
She Past Away to Aztec Death and Catholic Spit, the litany is so long as to be
almost beyond measure. One of the most frustrating things surrounding this
movement however has been my home town’s almost total and utter disinterest.
Somehow, sleepy old Perth just doesn’t seem to get it.

Happily though, there’s always the exception that proves the
rule, which brings us to Nerve Quakes.
Their latest, and I believe first full length, release is immense – punk?
Maybe. “Monarch” quite deservedly won them the Punk award for the West Australian Music Industry Award
in 2016. Certainly not punk in the hardcore sense like, say Discharge, but
actually slickly gliding punk / post-punk much in the vein of Siouxsie and the
Banshees on their early albums.

It is of course one of the oldest of clichés to accuse artists from the Gothy
side of the tracks, and perhaps the late Ian Curtis’ most unfortunate legacy,
of being bleak and depressing, but what we have here is almost the complete
opposite. The sound is bright, lush and compelling. Even Caitie intoning “ashes
to ashes, dust to dust” on “Basque” somehow almost impossibly carries a warmth
and compelling danceability.

On “A New State” Nerve Quakes have presented us with a genuinely solid and
coherent slab of eminently listenable dark post-punk. It sucks you in. It’s
virtually impossible not to like. A darkly seductive beast with a pop
sensibility somehow reminiscent of a more contemporary version of something
along the lines of Look Back in Anger.

It subtly glides through the realms and rivers of darkly introspective dreams
that the Perth dark alternative scene has so desperately needed for so very
long. Finally the local scene again has a genuinely excellent band that not
only has recorded product, but far more substance than two blokes in camo pants
hiding behind their laptops.

The official launch party is apparently scheduled for May, but in the
meanwhile, you can get your copy, either on vinyl or MP3 here:

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.